First Novels

First novels, am I right?

If you’ve been following along, you know I’ve been working on Rat for about three and a half years. Over that time, I’ve written several different versions of it and had two rounds of beta readers. Every draft was stronger than the last, but I was never able to take it to the next level. That is, it never stopped being rewrites and started being editing.

Halfway through the tenth rewrite, I decided I needed an extended break from it. I put it down around October 2019 and told myself I wouldn’t pick it back up until April of 2020. That would give me several months to explore other projects and cleanse my palate.

I ended up doing some of my strongest writing during that break. The words came easily. I was able to settle into characters. Even with COVID1-9 gumming up the works, I was able to finish Bearwalker, a second draft of a Latino-futuristic novel, and several pieces of short fiction (some of which have been accepted for publication). I was productive, satisfied with my efforts, and happy with the results. With that energy and a clean slate, I returned to Rat.

On Tuesday, April 28th, I sat down, opened Scrivener, and froze. Just like that, all the insecurity, the frustration, and the disappointment came flooding back. All the energy I had built up for Rat evaporated.

I realized I wasn’t in love with it anymore. Sure, I liked Falwar, whom I had just written a novelette about, and I liked some of the ideas I had but there were still massive issues. A siege story? For an entire novel? Barely a setting change, barely a change in action. It didn’t work.

And I didn’t want to do it anymore.

I spent several hours on Tuesday breaking Rat down, combing through my feelings about it, and debating what my next steps should be. Was I willing to walk away from Rat in its current form? What of my plans for the series? What would I even work on next?

It was a difficult few hours. I ended up staring out the window, trying to plot out what a new novel would look like, what I could take from Rat, what I could take from the series, if I could hold onto the titles I had come up with. I was filled with uncertainty.

And then things started to click.

I loved Falwar. I had just spent a couple of months living inside of his head for and felt comfortable with him. He was strong and exciting and I could feel my passion for writing stories with him. Did that mean I should write short stories and novellas about him? Little one offs? How could I weave him into a greater story and still stay true to the grander arc I had planned for my series?

Then I thought about Istasya. I’d had trouble pinning her age, getting her motivations clear, and figuring out her personality, but I knew her backstory well. I knew where I wanted her to end up. I’d always seen her as a heroine that, by the end of the series, would battle a cosmic horror for the fate of her world. That’s not something I wanted to lose.

Captain Ardanna, on the other hand, was less compelling. I’d struggled to breathe life into her and she didn’t have much to say in the greater story. She was less fleshed out and I didn’t have a clear visual in my head of her. So, I gave myself permission to just put her aside. She didn’t have to go anywhere, but she also didn’t have to be in the story.

Okay, great. Falwar and Istasya. Where could I go with that?

With Bearwalker basically finished, I started to think of the implications. Of what happened to the world. There had to be consequences. What did those look like? What happened to Falwar after the hunt?

As I was mulling over these questions, my other novel started to intrude. A cyberpunk city. A noir hero. Corruption, drugs, criminals.

Why did they have to be separate?

And then, in the space of a few moments, it all came to me. A new novel idea with characters I love, in a world I love, that had the potential to feed into a series and the arc I had already planned.

It meant giving Rat up, though. It meant giving the Latino-futuristic novel up, too. I would be cannibalizing two novels.

But that’s the thing. We grow as writers all the time, right? Rat was my first novel and I’d been holding onto it for over three years, smashing my head against the brick wall of many, many revisions, trying to make a story work that was, perhaps, intrinsically flawed from the start. Maybe it was time for me to let go and grow?

I pitched the new idea to some of my writer friends and received encouraging comments, including one from my good friend Christopher Zerby:

“[First] novels usually go in the drawer. Like 99.999999%. The people who can’t move on are the ones we’ve never heard of. The writers who can take it are the ones we all love.”

And, like in most things, I think he’s right. I was holding onto a story idea that wasn’t even a true story idea, and letting it dictate my journey. I was afraid to move on, afraid of having wasted three years on a novel, when in reality, those three years were what I had needed to grow as a writer. I needed the time and space to look at the problem objectively and to realize it was time for me to move on. To move up.

So, that’s what I’m doing. I’ve plotted out the barebones outline for this new novel and I’ve written the first two scenes. This is going to be my next novel and this is the one I'm going to query.

I’m being intentionally vague, of course, about my story idea. It’s still developing and there is a lot of exploration to do, but I can tell you Falwar and Istasya are in it and it occurs in the Free City of Lirium. Everything else, you’ll have to read when the book comes out.

How about you? Are you still working on your first novel? Have you left it behind? In what form does that novel exist for you? I want to hear about your decision making process and the outcome.

Stay safe. Stay home. Manage your well-being as best you can. You are loved.